Quadrupel Threat - A Very Large Belgian Quad

So, I was wanting to make a very big beer just to play with what it takes to successfully attenuate and create actual good flavor with high gravity/abv. After doing some research, I decided to go in the route of a Belgian Quad / Dark Strong Ale. This is mostly due to the capabilities of WLP530 (Abbey Ale) yeast. It has a high alcohol tolerance as well as being well known for not stopping mid fermentation. I also just really like belgians and it's summer so the math added up.

For the recipe, I did some research on what specialty grains and hops are used for certain clones, such as Westy 12, and then adjusting the amounts via ratio of clone abv vs goal abv. After building myself a bunch of options, I ended up going with the following:

Steeping grains:
6oz Special B
12oz Caramunich

Hops:
60min - 1 oz Nugget (13% AA)
30min - 1.5oz Hallertauer (4.8% AA)
15min - 1.5oz Styrian Goldings (5.4% AA)

60min:
4lbs MoreBeer UltraLight LME

15min:
12lbs MoreBeer UltraLight LME
2lbs D-180 Belgian Candi Syrup
1lbs D-45 Belgian Candi Syrup
1lbs Corn Sugar

On paper, this would get me an OG of roughly 1.133. Belgians are notorious for having a high percentage of pure sugar, so I went with 20% total mixture of candi and corn sugar. I chose MoreBeer's UltraLight because of it's higher than average fermentability (80% +/- 5%). So in a perfect world, this would let me attenuate down to 1.015. All of these decisions are in the name of attenuation, as well as aiming for as traditional of an end product as possible.

I suppose I should also explain my reasoning for the extreme amount of late addition. I am a firm believer that the length of a boil for extract brewing is only important for the AA extraction of hops. LME/DME was already wort at one point, so you only need to get it dissolved into the water. This reduces the amount of sugar that is caramalized during the boil which in turn means more fermentable sugar and lighter color. However, you do need a small amount at the beginning of the boil to help the hops (i aim for ~20%). More on this HERE.

Now, the most important part of this whole experiment is the yeast. I did mention WLP530 earlier, which I am using. However, to get enough of a yeast starter for this beer is incredibly difficult. Even a 1 gallon starter is not necessarily enough to give it a proper pitch. I decided that my best option was to make a 5 gallon batch of a simple ~1.060 OG Dubbel and pitching on it's yeast cake. In theory, this would give me about 1 trillion yeast cells. Yes this is over pitching a bit, but I am not taking any risks. I want attenuation. This also gives me a beer to drink while waiting on the Quad. :)

On top of pitching onto the WLP530 yeast cake, I pitched a small 1.5L starter of WLP099 (High Gravity Yeast) after about 3 days of fermentation. This allows the WLP530 to create most of the yummy Belgian flavors and lets the WLP099 do the cleanup work and make sure that my goal FG of <1.020 is reached. Also to note, WLP099 creates some belgiany type flavors itself in the right conditions.

Most everyone will tell you that you need an insane amount of oxygenation to make the yeast happy on a brew such as this. I do not have an oxygen tank and I do not plan on buying one either. My reasoning for this is the incredible power of olive oil. I opted for a small toothpick dipped in olive oil with the remaining drippings flicked off, and then thrown into the boil. This is a very controversial subject that is still not considered as good as oxygen, but I'm doing it anyways because $$$. You can read more about the science HERE.